Guitar's Cry
Disciple of Pan
Of course! As long as you recognize that there is no fundamental difference between "you" and "not-you."
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What is the Fundamental Nature of the Will?
- Thread starter Sunstone
- Start date
Of course! As long as you recognize that there is no fundamental difference between "you" and "not-you."
When I drive my car, the controls become a temporary extension of my will. I turn the wheel to turn the car, apply the brakes to slow down and stop, apply the gas to speed up, etc. (determinism via technology) However, the car is not me.
Guitar's Cry
Disciple of Pan
So why do you decide to turn the wheel, apply the breaks, etc? What made you want to operate the car?
The car is not "you" from the perspective of you. But without the filters and discriminating order of your brain, it is as much you as everything else is.
Why have a mind, brain, and intellect at all then?
It's a choice?
Is it? I suppose you can call thinking for yourself a choice, rather than allowing your mind to be overcome by something else.
I don't see it as a choice to have a mind, brain, and intellect, nor to execute choice. But I can see the car as an extension of "me." I can see the whole world as an extension of "me."
Guitar's Cry
Disciple of Pan
To observe.
That's not to say that there isn't something to the feeling of free will. Because we are defined by our senses and how our brains model data, we experience ourselves moving as separate entities moving around and doing things. But simultaneously, we are not at all separate from our environment and we act from and through it. Our reality is an observation of this relationship.
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Bear Wild
Well-Known Member
Wonderful viewpoint. We are intimately connected and dependent with our environment. I believe the reason we are in our environmental crisis is because we see ourselves as separate and lose responsibility for what we do or don't do.
What we think of as the will is clearly within the neurologic framework of the brain (both the cortical and subcortical) but it is intimately connected through our sensory system that integrates the information influenced by the cognitive aspect of the brain the influences the environment back through the directed actions of the brain. How much of this is truly free will always a debatable question since the will we develop is through the interactions of our environment. It is still a physical process.
Will, it is an expression of desire/choice.
My will is to be rich, or eat chocolate ice cream.
Freewill: freedom of humans to make choices that are not determined by prior causes or by divine intervention. merriam-webster
The way I look at this is sense we can imagine any past, present or future our choices are not bound by prior causes. Of course while we could make a choice based prior events/causes. We could also make a choice on a past that never existed or a future that never will. The choices we make is limited by what we can imagine, our ability to be creative, not only by prior causes.
Computer systems, input determines output. Humans however input does not necessarily determine output. So the output of a human cannot be determined until they've gone through the process of making a choice.